Strategic Help for a trapped newbie

[Atrocities]

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Converting atmospheres- Is it worth it? What techs, and how many points of resarch do I need to get it?

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In a word, yes. However, its far more economical to conqure a race that can breath the atomsphere of the planet.

AC's are a great tool for planets or moons without atomspheres. I place AC's on all moons and non atomsphere planets I colonize.

They take 20 + turns to convert, but once they do, they are very valuable. I only use the AC's on small planets and moons because they are non valued, and I can aford to wait the time it takes to convert them. Once they are converted, the pay off is makes up for the wait and cost.

[raynor]

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Originally posted by Possum:
Hahaha, Genghis, try not to be confused by the conflicting advice from Raynor and I, just try both ways and take what path suits you best.

Neither of us is really right or wrong, it's just that we have very different approaches

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You are definitely right. Lots of roads to victory. That makes it a great game.

Hey! I checked that 7 armor thing. It works quite well. Thanks for the tip! You're the man!

The only drawback to using armour to safeguard your ships is the research cost. It is going to run you about 200,000 research points before you can send a colony ship through the wormhole without getting damaged. On the other hand, in six turns, you can build three colony ships. Odds are extremely good that one of them will make it through the wormhole without losing the colonization module. Once one gets through, you can colonize a planet in that system and build a planetary space yard to repair the others. Then, you can use this base to expand your empire throughout the rest of the galaxy.

[Spyder]

In your position I would immediately divert most of my research to planetary usage (atmosphere converters) and Stellar Manipulation (wormhole manipulators & some other cool stuff). I would also consider researching the third colonization tech.

This would get you the tools with which to expand in the systems you currently own, and, allow you to escape to other systems while leaving your protective black holes in front of your primary systems.

While you are doing this research, I would begin colonizing all the huge & large planets and prepare for the atmosphere converters. Keep trying to get a few ships through one of the black holes...eventually you'll get one through...and colonize something on the outside and begin expanding from there. One of the very first changes I make to my colony ships is when I get Light Cruiser I make a brand new colony ship out of a light cruiser. This gives me much more space for cargo (people) and gives my colonies a jump-start.

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Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 02 March 2001).]

[Taqwus]

Don't forget that you only need to send *one* armored ship through the FWP -- a repair ship. Let it accompany a horde of normal colony ships, and it'll repair the damage (albeit slowly; may take multiple turns depending on repair shipony ship ratio. So you could send more than one if desired).

Also, the SM tree gives you Monolith Facilities. *Very* expensive to build, but worth it in a long game because they're so much more space efficient. And when combined with value improvement plants and (1) resource converter, so much the better...


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[raynor]

If you decide to build monolith facilities, you will get many, many more resources if you first fill the planet with level I or level II resource production facilities before you go back and start replacing them with Monolith III facilities.